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SL Squared :: Blog :: A sister lab?

February 07, 2009

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SL Squared - Lorne Olfman

A sister lab?

It seems like we have a sister lab at the University of Hawai’i. The Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies (LILT) directed by Daniel D. Suthers has a mission statement not unlike that of SL Squared. The paper that Suthers and a couple of his students presented at HICSS-42 clearly focuses on one of the key issues that SL2 has been studying. That is, how can we create linkages between students (and others) beyond those developed as a result of being in the same class. The authors of the paper refer to this as inter-course space (although my preference would have been the less pejorative inter-class space). The authors (on page 1 of their paper) state that they designed a system called discourse “to support individual courses while also allowing for serendipitous discovery of other persons, ideas and resources in the larger social network.” This sounds very much like one of the key goals of CCO, doesn’t it? They refer to the potential outcome as “bridging socio-technical capital” and they report findings to show that the system can produce such outcomes, including socially-derived value (what means participation in a discussion), creating a strong social network (which is not purely created by individual to individual(s) contact), and finding spontaneous associations (which are between people who are not “assigned to the same workspace”). I think it would be a great idea to begin dialogue to perhaps create some level of association with Suthers and LILT.

Keywords: LILT, socio-technical capital, Suthers

Posted by SL Squared - Lorne Olfman

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